After Annihilation
by Dwimordene
Summary: A drabble series on mourning, memory, and Vulcan identity. Spock, Sarek, Kirk, Uhura, and McCoy, post-Star Trek 2009.


Title: After Annihilation

Summary: A drabble series on mourning, memory, and Vulcan identity. Spock, Sarek, Kirk, Uhura, and McCoy, post-_Star Trek_.

**Measures**

The ship's logs report two standard days have passed since Vulcan's fall.

The survivors crowded into _Enterprise_'s crew quarters say one point three days have passed since the death of Vulcan.

Spock's reports use Vulcan's measures, relegate explanation of temporal discrepancies to footnotes. Illogical, perhaps, yet physics teaches time is relative. Vulcan was destroyed; symmetry demands Vulcan referents make measure.

That night, he receives a new measure: seven. He is – now, and forever – survivor seven.

Survivor six comes to him with a datachip and a message, passed hand to hand to mind: _For you, my son: all that we saved._

**Webs**

They're building a database: genetic profiles of all survivors. Lines stretch down the corridor from Sick Bay, as each survivor comes to register with Vulcan physicians at work there. Patient people.

Patient, devastated people.

McCoy watches the database grow: about each survivor's name spreads a web – family connections. Some names are amber – alive; others, white – unknown status; still others – an overwhelming many – are green: deceased.

He keys in a name. Above it, stand two others: Sarek's, in a thick web; Amanda's… alone.

And their son… medically, genetically, Spock's half the man of any other listed.

"Damn," McCoy swears, viciously. "Goddammit!"

**Memory**

What is a people without history?

What is history?

After Vulcan, history is hospitality: a diaspora of records.

Uhura reworks comm crews, commandeers anyone who speaks any Vulcan dialect, even halfway. "Oral history protocol," she orders.

Shift after shift, comm crew sit in Sick Bay, recording: Vulcan stories, Vulcan words… Vulcan grief, struggling with expression.

By week's end, they've got half the histories, halfway translated. Uhura's exhausted, overwhelmed – determined, though there's no relief. She and Spock bleed hurt into each other, nights.

And though she asks him, though he says her work is needed, he doesn't come to Sick Bay.

**Ambivalence**

The chip proves to hold Surak's writings, even the apocrypha; a generous selection from Kolinahr's proponents; and many writings on meditative and physical disciplines.

_All we have saved_, Sarek had said.

That is, in fact, untrue – so much is woven into muscle and mind through daily habits of discipline.

And as Spock reads Surak's words on the uses of melds, as he practices what Sulu – more right than he knows – calls Vulcan _katas_, he considers memory-laden sense certainty, and knows: the datachip's not all.

And he doesn't know _how _to reconcile with _all_ of memory – let alone what to feel.

**Friends in need**

Twenty-two hundred hours. Everyone's exhausted, strung-out. It's like there's something in the air, Kirk thinks. Senior staff meeting drags on; the undertone's brittle… and brutal.

At the special projects portion of the meeting, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura give their updates without quite looking at Spock.

Spock returns the favor, listening while reading a PADD.

Afterward, Kirk holds him back. "Spock, going up against you twice in ten days isn't my idea of fun, but consider this an offer…"

Because it might help_ one_ of them, at least. And he's no doctor, but he can gauge the wound in Spock's silence.

**Anomaly**

Spock logs out, notes the time – three days on-shift. Any longer, and McCoy will file complaints about the matter.

Fortunately, off-shift activity is discretionary. Spock takes files, intending to eat in the commons, where bridge officers are unlikely to find him.

But rounding a corner, he finds a child – Vulcan, perhaps four years old.

"_Are you lost_?" he asks, kneeling down before the boy, who wordlessly touches his face…

_Fear, loneliness, confusion_!

"Spock?" The link dissolves suddenly. Spock blinks up at his father, now holding the boy, whose fingers press Sarek's psi-points. His surprise must show, for Sarek says: "Come."

**Father feeling**

They return the child to his parents. Sarek then leads Spock to his quarters.

"You've questions," he declares. And to nascent protest: "When you were young, I did not encourage you to meld readily."

"These are exceptional circumstances," Spock answers.

"Indeed. That does not mean I did not err with you."

Ingrained habit breaks harder than apology: "I've no quarrel with my upbringing, Father." Sarek raises a brow.

"Yet you've submitted nothing to Communications."

"Lieutenant Uhura – "

"She requested my aid only in translating."

Still, Spock temporizes. "What could I contribute that is not redundant?"

"What logic demands: Vulcan's truth."

**Match**

Kirk wipes his face with a towel, and grins at his opponent, who grins back. And why shouldn't he? How often do crew get to kick their captain's ass?

Well,_ try_ to – Kirk isn't one to go down easily.

The door to the physio room hisses open; Kirk glances over, then pauses, surprised.

Spock makes straight for him, though. "Captain," he says.

"Commander," he answers. Then: "You here to collect?"

"If the captain will permit."

_About damn time!_ he thinks, and just to help him along, claps Spock's shoulder. "Nothing doing. You want my head, you have to earn it!"

**Point**

McCoy is reading EEGs, frowning at abnormal delta-wave patterns. They explain complaints of mood swings and insomnia this past week. It's not unexpected – stress this high does things to a body…

He's considering trank regimens, when two figures stagger into Sick Bay. McCoy gapes.

"Good God!" Kirk's hanging off Spock's shoulder; Spock's sporting a black eye, and yanks at Kirk's collar, exposing bruises along his neck. "You wanna explain these?"

"Testing pressure points," Spock answers.

"They exist," Kirk confirms, brightly, wincing.

There's some subtext McCoy's not getting. "We'll talk later," he warns Spock.

"Fine, great," Kirk grunts. "Painkillers _now_, Bones!"

**Medicine**

Kirk isn't terribly helpful: "I'm fine, Bones."

"You could've suffered nerve damage!" McCoy protests. "Vulcans – "

" – have really good technique. Bones, trust me," he urges, suddenly serious, "this isn't a problem."

"You wanna explain why not?" McCoy demands, when he gets Spock through his door.

Spock steeples his fingers. "Do you consider yourself religious, Doctor?"

McCoy stares. "Yes, but what – ?"

"Surak claims logic begins when we tell the universe its truth." A pause. "Can there be truth in contradiction?"

"Spock, if you need a chaplain – "

"I require _your_ answer."

He never has before. "Yes."

"Thank you, Doctor."

**History**

Uhura has made fourteen interviews today. Their count's climbing, though still incomplete – unlike her shift. As she keys in translation notes, she contemplates, unenthusiastically, the mess hall and the nightly trial of bedding down alone or with a rather listless Spock.

The door chime to her makeshift office rings. For a moment, she's tempted to pass, but she considers the coming evening, and instead calls: "Come! Thank you for partici–"

She stops, then. Spock lifts a brow. "Should I wait?" he asks.

Uhura straightens. "No. Please, sit."

"What are the parameters?"

She smiles faintly. "Whatever you wish to give."

_**Truth**_

_In every life, some moments become fixed in memory – like waymarkers for _kahs-wan_. _

Breathe in, hold, breathe out_. In his life, Spock, seven of ten thousand, will remember the world collapsing – everything he was, everything they've been, gone utterly. _

_There is before and after Vulcan. All else – even its injustices – is relative. _

Breathe in, hold, breathe out_. Generations of Vulcans practiced the disciplines: generations must continue, for tradition unites before and after – _all that we saved_._

_Even if tradition divides as much as unifies him – confusing reality! – he'll hold fast. _

_For he's Vulcan: after Vulcan, what else do Vulcans have?_

**Testimony**

The clock shows twenty-hundred hours. Second shift's long over but Spock has still more to say – twenty-one contradictions, he claims, and has counted carefully: all the disciplines that are peace based on war; his identity, false choice of what cannot be chosen; the many ways that IDIC can fail even while holding.

And though he'll never admit it, she thinks, Uhura cannot help but hear: through grief and hurt, he loves. He loves what he's here to expose without mercy: Vulcan ways. His ways.

"Was that adequate?" he asks, when he has finally nothing more.

She nods. "Truth always is."

**Divergence**

Fourteen point four days since Vulcan: the Vulcans prepare to depart.

Spock stands pondering the paradoxes of self-encounter, when he senses someone's scrutiny. He turns.

"Father," he greets Sarek.

"My son," Sarek answers. "Time grows short – are you prepared to leave?"

Spock hesitates. Sarek approaches then, lifts a hand and questioning brow. When Spock doesn't refuse, he touches his face.

"I see," he says, finally.

"I do not reject Vulcan, sir," Spock insists.

"No. Mine was… a foolish fear. And much misplaced."

Spock, after a moment, raises his hand. "Farewell, Father."

"_Peace_, my son," Sarek blesses him, "and long life."


End file.
